back to article If you're Russian to the Moon, expect traffic: Moscow's Putin a lander into orbit

If you're thinking of taking a trip to the Moon in the next few weeks, check the traffic report before you fly: three nations are currently preparing their attempts to land on Luna's surface. Russia launched its effort last Thursday when a Soyuz 2.1b rocket blasted off from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far east, carrying a …

  1. NorthernCoder

    Is that a Tom Lehrer reference?

    Who's next?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can we just move on to warp drive already? The Vulcans in orbit are probably getting bored.

    1. UCAP Silver badge
      Alien

      The Vulcans in orbit are probably getting bored

      That is not logical, captain.

    2. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Star Trek style warp drive can never work

      The speed of light is the limit. Your mass rises quickly when you get close to it. Pick your own practical limit: when your mass is the same as a planet, a star, or a galaxy. If you picked star conservation of mass requires that for you to have the mass of a star the mass of other things that used to have the mass of a star only have the mass you had before you accelerated to nearly the speed of light. Other people are going to be peeved if you do that to the sun. Luckily for you they will die quickly with no chance of catching up with you.

      Warp drive cheats by distorting space. You use magical technology to make the distance along your trajectory shorter for the duration of your journey. The problem is that distortions in space travel at the speed of light. To create the required distortion near your destination the distortion has to travel the full distance through space before it gets distorted. To travel five light years in one year you have to start you warp engine over four years in advance so the distorted space is where you want it when you get there.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: Star Trek style warp drive can never work

        What, you mean that people writing science-themed entertainment shows in the 1960s weren't very good at theoretical physics as we know it today? That's a disappointment.

        Of course, we have a lot of questions in physics that we don't understand yet. For example, whatever dark energy is, whether it's a single phenomenon, multiple combining ones, or a mistake in existing models, it seems to allow things to move in ways that the existing models suggest they can't. Maybe that will turn out to mean that we could also do so. Or maybe it means that we could try to do so and die in interesting new ways. Or it could be like fusion: a fun way to spend decades getting nowhere, but it will be here in about twenty years. Be careful when you say that physicists can prove for certain that something is impossible, because physicists have said that at previous times, and sometimes, physics has proved them wrong.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        For God's sake, Jim!

        I'm an actor not a Scotsman.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The first commercial enterprise on the moon

    .. will be NPR setting up a parking lot.

    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: The first commercial enterprise on the moon

      .. will be NPR setting up a parking lot.

      It's a hard sell trying to describe the moon as paradise..

  4. Adrian 4

    https://xkcd.com/713/

  5. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Look at me!

    The mission primarily serves Russian propaganda: look at us, we can still send rockets to the moon! But also, look we can still send ICBMs wherever we want. Russia gave up on science a couple of decades ago.

    1. sanmigueelbeer

      Re: Look at me!

      The mission primarily serves Russian propaganda: look at us, we can still send rockets to the moon!

      One step at a time. Watch them design tanks that sends turrets up in the air.

    2. Marcelo Rodrigues
      Trollface

      Re: Look at me!

      "The mission primarily serves Russian propaganda: look at us, we can still send rockets to the moon! But also, look we can still send ICBMs wherever we want. Russia gave up on science a couple of decades ago."

      Looking at the state of (no) maintenance its armed forces have... would the ICBMs even leave the silos?

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: Look at me!

        I'm quite sure they will. Russia has basically nothing they can be that proud of except for the fact that they have a much larger nuclear force than even many other nuclear powers. This is how they can still count themselves as a superpower even when nobody else would. That is the kind of incentive that is needed to make sure you keep hiring people to maintain and operate the facilities even when there is basically no realistic situation in which those weapons would need to be fired.

    3. TVU

      Re: Look at me!

      "Russia gave up on science a couple of decades ago"

      ^ I fully agree with this and the second most powerful player on the space scene these days after the USA is China. Putin squandered the Soviet Union's significant contribution to space science and the only way that Russian cosmonauts will get to the Moon is as token guests on a Chinese lunar mission.

  6. xyz123 Silver badge

    We have put a faster-than-light spacebase the size of Moscow on the moon. Except its invisible and has forceshields to block all detection - Russia.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And all Lunar residents have voted to unite with Russia and be their citizens forever.

  7. Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward Silver badge

    This reminded me of the ending scene from Iron Sky...

    Who'll reach the North Pole first, and mine for water successfully? The race is on.

    Will a moisture harvesting farm be possible on the Moon (or Mars) some time in the future? If this happen, we should rename Mars to Tatooine.

    Jabba is waiting.

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Ice mining on Mars

      Away from the equator there is a good supply of ice under a few metres of rubble. The tech to mine it has been tested in Antarctica. You will need a source of heat. On Mars that could be nuclear - which is handy because nuclear needs a source of cold.

      Drill through the rubble and a little ice. Install a pressure seal in the ice. Pump in warm water from the reactor. The warm water melts ice and becomes cold water. Use some of the warm water pressure to pump cold water out and divert a portion of it to cool the reactor. When you have got close to the bottom of the ice, move the ice mine to one side and fit out your new radiation shielded habitable space with thermal insulation and all the comforts of home.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Ice mining on Mars

        Is that an assumption or is there evidence of water in such a form that clearing out the ice will leave a useful void with something other than a "rubble" covering? I'd expect anything that close to the surface to be more like a permafrost, ie some water ice in a porous rock or similar structure.

  8. Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Lovely Punnery

    Keep it up, guys!

    1. Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward Silver badge

      Re: Lovely Punnery

      Seems the downvote is from somebody who hateses nasty punneryses *gollum*

      Apologies for piddling on your battery, but I do love a good punnery, even though I struggle with making good puns myself.

      No russian, slow and steady does it.

  9. GruntyMcPugh

    No Russian Rover? Do the KGB not hire dwarves any more: -)

  10. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
    FAIL

    Lenin them a hand

    Don't be Romanov the trajectory even if the project keeps Stalin.

    (Nyet comrades, I'm not (Alexander the) Great at this)

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Lenin them a hand

      "(Nyet comrades, I'm not (Alexander the) Great at this)"

      I'm not Rasputin the fact sir!

  11. Timbo

    oh dear....

    As of today (20th August) it seems that LUNA-25 has crashed.

    Might be due to a malfunction, or maybe a crafty Ukrainian drone collided with it and it then took a nose dive to the lunar surface.

    I just hope it hasn't contaminated anything there, like many thousands of gallons of otherwise pure ice, or maybe Putin just wants to lay waste to anything that might of use to any other (peaceful) nation.

    Nice icon to perfectly highlight a post.

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